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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2Everybody Lies – Including Your Prospectshttps://www.libertydigital.net/2015/06/25/everybody-lies-including-your-prospects/
https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/06/25/everybody-lies-including-your-prospects/#respondThu, 25 Jun 2015 14:15:00 +0000https://www.authentiasoft.com/?p=769House, M.D. was a U.S. television show from 2004 through 2012. The show’s main character, Dr. Gregory House, was (according to Wikipedia) “a pain medication-dependent, unconventional, misanthropic medical genius who leads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (PPTH) in New Jersey.” One of his recurring mantras that frequently worked its way […]

Gregory House, M.D. never believed anything his patients told him because, according to him, “everybody lies.”

House, M.D. was a U.S. television show from 2004 through 2012. The show’s main character, Dr. Gregory House, was (according to Wikipedia) “a pain medication-dependent, unconventional, misanthropic medical genius who leads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (PPTH) in New Jersey.” One of his recurring mantras that frequently worked its way into episode plot lines was that “everybody lies.” His colleagues would frequently discount his diagnoses based on statements from the patients. He consistently insisted that they were always lying and, of course, he was always right.

I’ve never been a big fan of focus groups or consumer surveys. There are several reasons to be highly skeptical of such things. It may be a bit hyperbolic, but taken collectively one would be forgiven for thinking that “everybody lies,” including your prospects.

Let’s Pick on Millennials

Not because they necessarily deserve it, but because the marketing world seems to be obsessed with them at the moment. Major brands are betting their futures based on consumer surveys of millennials by changing their business practices and even their product offerings. The logic here is that this generation is where the growth will be. They’re just starting to enter the years when they’ll be buying homes and starting families. So far, this makes a whole lot of sense. But there’s one major flaw that’s starting to pop up.

They’re lying.

I’ve read several articles recently that provide evidence indicating that some of these major brands have based their decisions on flawed surveys. The first such example is that Millennials apparently love Wal-Mart — and employees are shocked. Why are they shocked? Because most retail analysts insist that millennials prefer smaller, more intimate shopping experiences over the big-box stores. At least that’s what they say when asked in consumer surveys. But their behavior contradicts this assumption. “Millennials now, as a generation, like Walmart the best, more so than Generation X, more so than boomers,” Matt Kistler, Walmart senior VP-consumer insights and analytics, told Ad Age.

While Walmart is pleasantly surprised that millennials are lying in market surveys, McDonalds may not be lovin’ it so much. Neither are Pizza Hut or Olive Garden, all of whom have revamped their menus to better appeal to millennials. They want to attract these younger consumers, hoping that they will become life-long patrons. According to a recent article on Business Insider, millennials are lying about what they want to eat, and it’s destroying fast food.

To appeal to millennials, McDonald’s overloaded its menu with premium smoothies, gourmet sandwiches, and creative salads. Pizza Hut added a variety of customizable options including fresh spinach and Sriracha drizzles. And Olive Garden released a tapas menu of gourmet-style small plates to attract the foodie generation.

All of these efforts flopped, and there’s an important reason: Millennials are lying about their food habits. Millennials say they want food that is high quality, free of additives, and sustainable, but they aren’t always willing or able to pay for it.

The only reason I’m picking on millennials is that there has been a recent slew of articles about how marketing assumptions about them are proving to be very different from their actual behavior. But I work predominately in the B2B space – particularly with engineers – and deal with the exact same disconnects between perception and reality. As marketers, we need to be extremely cautious about relying on what people tell us they want.

Let’s take a look at some reasons why people’s behaviors don’t always match their self-professed values.

Our Brains Lie to Us

Carlos DeLuna was wrongfully executed in 1989 based solely on eyewitness testimony that turned out to be inaccurate.

Sometimes the fact that we’re not telling truth isn’t entirely our fault. It turns out that our brains lie to us all the time. One of the developments that’s causing scientists to explore the fallibility of our memories is the alarming number of criminal convictions being overturned by DNA evidence. In a whopping 75% of those cases, the primary evidence was eyewitness testimony.

So why do humans make such terrible witnesses? One reason is that our memories are much lower resolution than we think. When we recall a memory, it seems extremely vivid to us, but that’s because the brain hates fuzzy memories and so it interpolates and substitutes details it thinks belong there but weren’t necessarily. There are two sources for these interpolated details: pre-existing schemas and other memories. We understand the world through our own stereotyped models of the world, and so when details are lacking we fill them in with assumptions from our schema library. Most of the time, we’re not even conscious of the fact that we do it. Other times, our brains simply conflate memories and borrow details from one event to fill in the gaps in another.

We Are Irrational

Many theories and strategies rely on the assumption that people will act rationally in their own self-interest. While the latter is probably true in most cases, the former is demonstrably false. The truth is that we humans are not nearly as rational in our decision-making as we like to think.

In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely says “When we believe beforehand that something will be good, it generally will be good – and when we think it will be bad, it will be bad.” This was his conclusion following a series of experiments on the effect of expectations. In one experiement, he offered free beer to MIT students. He offered them two flavors, one of which was regular Budweiser and the other was Budweiser with two drops of balsamic vinegar. One group of students was given the samples without any introduction. This group showed a strong preference for the beer + vinegar combination. However, when the second group was told before tasting that the second beer had vinegar added to it, they much preferred the plain version.

In a similar experiment, Ariely offered students free coffee. Over a series of days, he switched up the containers that held the condiments. For one group, they used beautiful glass-and-metal containers on fancy brushed metal trays. Another group was given styrofoam cups with hand-written labels in a red felt pen. The students who were given the condiments using the fancy serving ware gave much higher ratings for the coffee’s flavor than those who were served using the styrofoam cups.

There are countless other examples in his book that shoot down the notion that we always make rational decisions. This is another big reason why the things we say don’t always match the things we do.

We Simply Don’t Know

Asking customers what they want can be a tricky strategy. Henry Ford if frequently credited with saying, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.” While the evidence as to whether or not he actually uttered these words is sketchy, his actions certainly support the sentiment. However, there is one famous innovator who expressed a similar philosophy much more recently. Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

I’ve had my own experience with this concept as well. My first job out of college was as an automation engineer and my job was to use technology to make manufacturing equipment faster, more efficient, and higher quality. The machine operators were invaluable to my designs, because they knew things intuitively that we engineers could never, ever calculate. However, I quickly learned that it didn’t work very well when I asked them, for example, what they would like a user interface screen to look like. It didn’t work because they simply didn’t know what was possible. The best outcomes happened when I asked them what the pain points were, showed them possible solutions, and then incorporated their feedback into the final design.

Conclusion

We’ve seen hard evidence that customers lie to marketers and covered a small fraction of the reasons why this happens. Now, I am not saying that customer surveys and market research are useless. I’m saying that they are fallible. My own philosophy as a marketer is, “Trust but verify.” I’ll use customer sentiment and surveys as inputs to designed experiments that test the veracity of the assumptions before making game-changing strategic decisions.

]]>https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/06/25/everybody-lies-including-your-prospects/feed/0Google’s Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Update Is Cominghttps://www.libertydigital.net/2015/03/30/googles-mobile-friendly-algorithm-update-is-coming/
https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/03/30/googles-mobile-friendly-algorithm-update-is-coming/#respondMon, 30 Mar 2015 21:33:01 +0000https://www.authentiasoft.com/?p=696For those digital marketing professionals who’ve been stranded on a desert island for the past couple of years, you may be surprised to learn that Google is launching a long-awaited algorithm update on the 21st of April. This update will be rolled out over the course of a week and it will incorporate mobile usability as […]

]]>For those digital marketing professionals who’ve been stranded on a desert island for the past couple of years, you may be surprised to learn that Google is launching a long-awaited algorithm update on the 21st of April. This update will be rolled out over the course of a week and it will incorporate mobile usability as a ranking factor.

And so it’s official: If your site is still not mobile-friendly, it is officially time to panic.

What We Know About the Mobile-Friendly Update

First, we know when and how long this rollout will take. As mentioned, it will begin on April 21st and take approximately a week.

We also know that Google either considers your website to be mobile-friendly or not. There are no degrees or scales of mobile-friendliness. I’ll talk more about this in a minute.

As per usual, we don’t know exactly how much this will impact search results. However, Google has said that it will be “significant.” If you’re used to reading the Google tea leaves, you’ll know that they have a tendency not to use words like that. Rather, they like to play down the impact of any one algorithm update. In fact, Zineb Ait Bahajji, a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, was quoted at SMX Munich as saying it will have more of an impact than either Panda or Penguin, two of the most prolific algorithm updates in their history. This is why it has so many marketers a little spooked and referring to this as “mobilegeddon.”

How to Prepare for Mobilegeddon

Step One: Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

To check your website and see if Google considers your site to be mobile-friendly, you can use their Mobile-Friendly Test tool. All you need to do is paste the URL of your website into the tool and click “Analyze.” It will give you a proverbial thumbs-up or thumbs-down verdict.

Step Two: Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

There are two options to creating a mobile-friendly website. The first is to create a whole separate version of your site for mobile devices. There are many different third party tools that can help with this approach, depending upon your particular web technology. When a visitor reaches your website, if they’re using a mobile device, they will (hopefully) be redirected to a separate version of your site that is reformatted to work in smaller widths. Typically, these are done on subdomains like “mobile.yourwebsite.com.”

The second – and much preferred – option is to use a mobile responsive website design. From Wikipedia:

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). A site designed with RWD adapts the layout to the viewing environment by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries.

The Authentia website is a responsive web design. To experience exactly what this means, if you’re visiting on a desktop browser, you can simply grab one edge of the browser window and drag it to make the window narrower. You’ll see that as the display area gets smaller, the content moves and flows and automatically shifts itself to accommodate the smaller widths.

If your site is using a content management system like WordPress or Joomla! (for examples), then it relies on a template or theme to render the content. These themes should be using responsive web design, but if they’re not then it’s time to replace your theme with one that is. And if you’re not using a content management system, then it’s time to address that, too.

Step Three: Optimize and Monitor

Google Webmaster tools is essential for this step. It provides a wealth of information and warnings regarding crawl errors and usability issues. This includes a Mobile Usability Report that will tell you when and if they see any problems with your site.

If you find any usability errors here, Google Developers also has a handy Mobile SEO guide to walk you through all of the considerations for making your website to show up in mobile search results.

Conclusion

More than half of all searches are now initiated from mobile devices. Google has been warning us for years that they would be taking mobile usability in account and we are now just three weeks away from them throwing that switch. Up until now, having a website that’s not mobile-friendly simply meant that you were alienating anywhere between a quarter and half of your visitors and making it a difficult and frustrating experience. But now, you’re going to see a “significant” drop in search referral visits if you don’t make your website mobile-friendly by April 21, 2015.

But, hey. You’ve still got three weeks. You can probably put it off at least another couple of weeks. Right?

]]>https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/03/30/googles-mobile-friendly-algorithm-update-is-coming/feed/02015 Control System Integrators Digital Marketing Benchmark Reporthttps://www.libertydigital.net/2015/03/23/2015-control-system-integrators-digital-marketing-benchmark-report/
https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/03/23/2015-control-system-integrators-digital-marketing-benchmark-report/#respondMon, 23 Mar 2015 13:02:47 +0000https://www.authentiasoft.com/?p=691With my background in industrial controls and leadership positions in the International Society of Automation (ISA), control system integrators are near and dear to my heart. I have lots of friends and colleagues who work in that industry. Over the past few years, I’ve conducted dozens of digital marketing assessments for control system integrators and […]

With my background in industrial controls and leadership positions in the International Society of Automation (ISA), control system integrators are near and dear to my heart. I have lots of friends and colleagues who work in that industry. Over the past few years, I’ve conducted dozens of digital marketing assessments for control system integrators and other automation companies. I thought it would be interesting to conduct an industry-wide assessment and see how the industry as a whole is adapting to digital marketing trends.

We randomly selected 100 North American control system integrators and assessed their digital marketing effectiveness against 32 separate criteria. These criteria are divided into 5 categories:

Design & Usability: How well does the website welcome visitors and communicate the company’s unique value proposition?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Is the website optimized in order to receive organic search traffic and is paid search being leveraged?

Content Marketing: Is there content available on the website to attract visitors and generate links because it offers value to prospective leads?

Social Media: Does the website connect with multiple, active and engaged social media channels?

Marketing Funnel: Are there offers for visitors to enter the marketing funnel at every stage, not simply the bottom, sales stage?

The results would seem to indicate that control system integrators lag behind other B2B industries by a significant margin. We compared them against our archive of previous surveys and evaluations and found that integrators fell short in each of the five categories:

That’s the bad news. However, the good news is that it means the playing field is fairly wide open and opportunities abound for integrators to step in and quickly fill the void.

Key Findings

We summarized the key findings from our survey and put together a presentation that highlights not only the deficiencies but the opportunities as well.

]]>https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/03/23/2015-control-system-integrators-digital-marketing-benchmark-report/feed/0Smart Funnels: How to Get Max Digital Marketing ROI In Shortest Timeframehttps://www.libertydigital.net/2015/02/24/get-max-digital-marketing-roi-in-shortest-timeframe-with-smart-funnels/
https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/02/24/get-max-digital-marketing-roi-in-shortest-timeframe-with-smart-funnels/#respondTue, 24 Feb 2015 22:24:15 +0000https://www.authentiasoft.com/?p=666SmartFunnels are simply the next evolution in marketing strategy that take advantage of new technologies and channels. CRM and email marketing system capabilities have advanced to the point where it is relatively simple to create sophisticated digital funnels. And new direct marketing channels have appeared via social media advertising. Together, these give rise to the […]

]]>SmartFunnels are simply the next evolution in marketing strategy that take advantage of new technologies and channels. CRM and email marketing system capabilities have advanced to the point where it is relatively simple to create sophisticated digital funnels. And new direct marketing channels have appeared via social media advertising. Together, these give rise to the ability to combine inbound and outbound marketing strategies for optimum results in the shortest possible amount of time.

Both outbound and inbound marketing have their respective strengths and weaknesses. By combining these approaches, we’ve been able to realize the best of both marketing worlds. Scalable, direct marketing tactics can significantly boost the volume of leads into an inbound marketing funnel, shortening the conversion window while preserving the longer term benefits of content marketing.

Comparing Inbound and Outbound Marketing

There has been considerable discussion recently regarding inbound marketing and its superiority to outbound marketing. Experience with each approach reveals that each as a share of strengths and weaknesses.

In a sense, it’s a difference without a distinction. It’s all marketing. The goal is to attract prospects and convert them to customers. The strategies and tactics are slightly different, and their respective benefits tend to be perpetuated and exaggerated by businesses and consultants with a product and/or vested interest in one or the other.

(click on the image to view full size)

If you compare the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches, you’ll notice that they are quite complimentary to one another. Each tends to make up for the shortcomings of the other.

That’s what SmartFunnels are all about. They combine the best of both worlds from traditional outbound marketing and modern inbound marketing in order to deliver the best results in the fastest possible time frame.

What Are SmartFunnels?

SmartFunnels rely on a series of offerings designed to move prospects through the sales funnel, and then on a return path for additional and/or more profitable offers:

Traffic Sources: It’s fair to say that driving traffic tends to take up the significant share of a digital marketer’s time and resources. Inbound marketing tends to focus on more organic sources, such as search engines and social media. Outbound strategies employ more direct tactics such as advertising and email.

Lead Magnet: A Lead Magnet is an irresistible “bribe” that delivers value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. It is likely the first interaction you will have with a prospect and is the entry point into a SmartFunnel. The goal of the Lead Magnet is to convert cold traffic into leads.

Tripwire: The job of a Lead Magnet is to generate leads. The job of a Tripwire is to convert that lead into a paying customer with an affordable offer. The goal is to create a customer and not necessarily to generate profit at this point.

Core Offering: Most marketing campaigns attempt to convert cold traffic directly into Core Offer customers. Your Core Offer is the main product or service offered by your business. It’s generally a difficult proposition to make that leap, and depending upon your product or service price point, it can be nearly impossible.

Profit Maximizer: In some cases, the Core Offer is enough to become profitable and a Profit Maximizer isn’t required. But in other cases, businesses need to increase the average value per customer.

Return Path: The goal of the Return Path is to have frequent, strategic communication with your buyers and prospects that cause them to buy again and again. This is the final CVO step; increasing the number of transactions per customer.

]]>https://www.libertydigital.net/2015/02/24/get-max-digital-marketing-roi-in-shortest-timeframe-with-smart-funnels/feed/06 Outbound Marketing Graphs You Need to See for 2015https://www.libertydigital.net/2014/12/10/6-outbound-marketing-graphs-need-see-2015/
https://www.libertydigital.net/2014/12/10/6-outbound-marketing-graphs-need-see-2015/#respondWed, 10 Dec 2014 15:14:49 +0000https://www.authentiasoft.com/?p=632In my last blog post, I talked about how you can accelerate your inbound marketing efforts by combining them with outbound marketing tactics. Business Insider just released its 2014 Future of Digital slide deck. I’ve reviewed it, and it reveals a ton of hard data to support a lot of things most of us already know: […]

Digital advertising is growing, all other media are shrinking (except radio)

Google and YouTube are dominating

There is a very wide digital divide between the young and old

I reviewed the entire deck, and pulled out 6 slides that I think provide some valuable insight for digital marketers as they map out their outbound marketing campaigns for 2015.

#1 – Look for gaps to find opportunity.

Digital marketing opportunities afford themselves disproportionately to the early adopters. The earlier you can jump into a trend, the more success you’ll find. The following slide shows the gap between where people are spending their time and where marketers are spending their dollars. You can easily spot two severe mismatches; print and mobile. It tells me that print is still wildly overvalued, whereas mobile is the land of opportunity right now.

Courtesy of Business Insider’s The Future of Digital 2014

#2 – Mobile-first does not mean mobile-only.

Google and Facebook have both made it very well-known that they have a “mobile first” strategy with their products. That’s because they recognize the obvious trends to mobile technology. However, it’s important to recognize that mobile is growing the entire pie, not simply eating away at the desktop market share. People are still buying computers and the amount of time spent on them has leveled off, but isn’t declining significantly.

Courtesy of Business Insider’s The Future of Digital 2014

#3 – The big growth is in mobile.

So, while you don’t want to forsake desktop, it’s important to realize where the serious growth will take place. That’s in the mobile space. Successful outbound marketing campaigns will likely take advantage of this growth by targeting mobile channels and ensuring they have mobile-optimized experiences.

Courtesy of Business Insider’s The Future of Digital 2014

#4 – Combine mobile and video for the “kaboom.”

Most digital marketers probably already knew that mobile is the place to be. But what’s the best way to leverage that trend for outbound campaigns? Video.

Courtesy of Business Insider’s The Future of Digital 2014

#5 – Search engine marketing is getting saturated.

Desktop display advertising tends to be the “front of mind” channel for digital marketers’ outbound campaigns. There’s good reason for that: The volume is still massive. However, the competition is fierce and the revenue deceleration is revealing in that respect.

Courtesy of Business Insider’s The Future of Digital 2014

#6 – Other opportunities include native and programmatic advertising.

If pay per click doesn’t represent the best opportunity for 2015, what does? In addition to mobile advertising, the other interesting opportunities for outbound marketing in 2015 will be in native and programmatic advertising channels. Although the growth for social media advertising is projected to be lower than these, that’s where I’d be focusing my attention. I think social media channels are still largely misunderstood and underutilized – especially for outbound marketing campaigns.

Courtesy of Business Insider’s The Future of Digital 2014

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been concentrating more and more on Facebook and YouTube as outbound marketing channels. Based on all of the data provided from these charts, it seems like my instincts were on target. And so I’ll throw in one last bonus chart from a related Business Insider article this morning; Facebook And YouTube Account For Almost 40% Of All Mobile Internet Traffic